t. Remember
every word I have told you, or we will not be responsible."

The old Squire encouraged us to have a nest egg at the bank, and by the
end of the year there were seven bank books at the farm, all carefully
put away under lock and key, in fact there were nine, counting the two
that belonged to our hired men, Asa and Jim Doane. Acting on the old
Squire's exhortation to practise thrift, they vowed that they would lay
up a hundred dollars a year from their wages. The Doanes had worked for
us for three or four years. Asa was a sturdy fellow of good habits; but
Jim, his younger brother, had a besetting sin. About once a month,
sometimes oftener, he wanted a playday; we always knew that he would
come home from it drunk, and that we should have to put him away in some
sequestered place and give him a day in which to recover.

For two or three days afterwards Jim would be the meekest, saddest, most
shamefaced of human beings. At table he would scarcely look up; and
there is not the least doubt that his grief and shame were genuine. Yet
as surely as the months passed the same feverish restlessness would
again show itself in him.

We came to recognize Jim's symptoms only too well, and knew, when we saw
them, that he would soon have to have another playday. In fact, if the
old Squire refused to let him off on such occasions, Jim would get more
and more restless and two or three nights afterwards would steal away
surreptitiously.

"Jim's a fool!" his brother, Asa, often said impatiently. "He isn't fit
to be round here."

But the Squire steadily refused to turn Jim off. Many a time the old
gentleman sat up half the night with the returned and noisy prodigal. A
word from the Squire would calm Jim for the time and would occasionally
call forth a burst of repentant tears. Jim's case, indeed, was one of
the causes that led us at the old farm so bitterly to hate intoxicants.

That, however, is the dark side of Jim's infirmity; one of its more
amusing sides was his bank book. When Jim was himself, as we used to say
of him, he wanted to do well and to thrive like Asa, and he asked the
old Squire to hold back ten dollars from his wages every month and to
deposit it for him in the new savings bank. Mindful of his infirmity,
Jim gave his bank book to grandmother to keep for him.

"Hide it," he used to say to her. "Even if I come and want it, don't you
let me have it."

That was when Jim was himself; but when he had gone for